The World Amateur Subbuteo Players Association is an alternative circuit of tournaments for subbuteo table football players and clubs from around the world. Join now! It's free and it's all about playing the beautiful game! Players from 44 different nations have already joined! What about you?

Friday, 30 August 2013

There is much to learn from the subbuteo season and there is much to say about how WASPA can be positive for the development of the game. Some nations definately took advantage of the WASPA circuit to grow.

CANADA has definately been the nation with the most amazing development over the last 12 months. The country had not had any tournament for years but 27 tournaments in 5 different cities(Calgary, Hamilton, Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver) have been organized under WASPA banner and 48 different players are ranked. Hopefully the development will continue next season and of Canada is ready to host a tournament of the FISTF circuit in the future, it will be a great honor for WASPA to have contributed to reach the next level.

AUSTRALIA also anaged to have tournaments again. Five tournaments were held in Penrith (near Sydney) and two events were held in Melbourne. There are also contacts in a few different places (Perth, Brisbane). With the relaunch of Subbuteo over there, there will be some possible new players and clubs. Hopefully more events will take place next season.

SINGAPORE is continueing their development. They now have more small events, which is very positive for the game. With the local distributor of Subbuteo for South-Eastern Asia, there will hopeflly be some more players in the country but also in MALAYSIA and possibly BRUNEI. WASPA had a few contacts in Malaysia but it's difficult to organize things over there.

The UNITED STATES have had a difficult time last year but it seems the ASA is now back on the right track with more local events, some new players and clubs and a great national championship. WASPA was very proud to have tournaments in Michigan, California, Delaware, Maryland, Florida, Colorado, Connecticut and South Carolina.

We can certainly not forget ITALY. They are the number 1 nation in the world of subbuteo but this season, many clubs decided to have WASPA tournaments. There were events in Rome first but since December, many cities joined the movement to organize a total of 39 events (including 7 with the old ETF rules). This is simply fantastic.

ENGLAND has had a huge development in the lest 8 months with events held in differents cities (London, Manchester, Thornaby, Lincoln...) and with certainly many more events to come soon.

CYPRUS has also trusted the WASPA circuit with 11 tournaments over the year. The Famagusta players had many good event but they also continue to host FISTF tournaments. Well done! Hopefully there will be developments this year, maybe with the creation of a new club in Nicosia.

Congratulations to SOUTH AFRICA. After Johannesburg, Pretoria is now also on the map. There are some good developments over there.

BELGIUM has had tournaments in Templeuve and Jambes and there will be events in Hofstade-Zemst and Velaine next season so the interest for WASPA is growing there.

MALTA is still on of the strong nations with events held byt the clubs of Attard and Bormla. It is also good to see some top players attending their events.

IRELAND and NORTHERN IRELAND had their first tournaments under WASPA banner this year. It was good to see them in action. Donegal Subbuteo Club in Ireland will also host their first events next season.

It was good also to have some tournaments in CHILE, FINLAND, GERMANY and WALES.

SPAIN had a few small events in the Barcelona area.

JAPAN, HONG KONG and DENMARK have not hosted any tournament this season but hopefully they will be back in the circuit soon. With a bit of luck WASPA will have their first events in SCOTLAND, SWITZERLAND, NORWAY, PORTUGAL, GREECE, the NETHERLANDS,... next season.

Thanks to WASPA, we have had some new nationalities in the ranking: ZIMBABWE, PORTUGAL, AUSTRIA, FRANCE, GREECE, SWITZERLAND, PAKISTAN, JAMAICA, SCOTLAND, BOLIVIA and... the ISLE OF MAN. We even had a player from SWEDEN winning a tournament in CHILE. Well done!

Thanks for everyone who made things happen. Please keep in mind WASPA is a totally free circuit with no tax to pay and easy rules. You only need 3 players to have a tournament and different sets of rules can be used (FISTF rules, advanced rules, ETF rules, Finnish rules).

We had 177 tournaments in total this season. Hopefully we can reach the magic number of 200 next season.

Tuesday, 27 August 2013

In August 10 tournaments were played under WASPA banner, which is very good for the summer period. There were 4 tournaments in England, 2 in Canada, 1 in Belgium, Singapore, Cyprus and South Africa. Steve Bennett became the first Scot to win a WASPA tournament. Tan Kok Wee won his first tournament in Singapore (he won in Hong Kong last year). Clifford Graaff won again in South Africa and there were some big names among the winners in England: Brian Daley and Chris Thomas. Well done to Canada for having organized 27 events this season!

To be noted some details of the last tournament in South Africa are sill missing and will be included in the next report.

b) Rankings

Geoffrey Marain (Belgium) is still on top of the ranking but Peter Sexton (Canada) is now very close of the first place. Canada has extended the lead in the ranking of nations while Belgium is back on the podium. 833 players from 32 nations are ranked.

c) Season report

This season is now over and all I can say is that the development has been awesome. In the first 16 months of existance, we had 35 regional tournaments and 1 tournaments with the ETF rules. In the last 12 months we had 164 regional tournaments, 8 tournaments with the ETF rules, 3 promotional tournaments and 1 tournament with advanced rules. At the end of August 2012, we had 220 ranked players from 18 countries. It means the number of involved players was multiplied by 3,78. Will we do more in the next 12 months?

d) Finnish rules

As we have tournaments with FISTF, ETF and advanced rules, there was no reason to refuse to have tournaments with Finnish rules. From now on it's possible but the Finnish association will send us a translation of the rules in english soon.

To be noted in September there will be 2 events with the Advanced rules in Donegal (Ireland) and Worcester (England). Both clubs will be hosting their first tournament under WASPA banner. Welcome!

e) WASPA and FISTF

WASPA is developping more than expected but I still believe it does not make shadow to FISTF. WASPA is concentrating on local events and doesn't have the same philosophy. For this reason, we can not accept the behavior of the FISTF president who is continuously putting pressure on players and organizers to stop any kind of colaboration with WASPA. Our game is too small to divide the community. WASPA players will never be forbidden to play WASPA tournaments. for the same reason, we should in no case any kind of pressure or any kind of blackmail from the FISTF president, in particular since the nations present at the FISTF AGM in Issy-les-Moulineaux on February 2013 confirmed that WASPA can only bring something positive for the game. We believe both circuit can continue their development by keeping their difference and attracting players with different sources of motivation.

REMINDER:
For the future, we will try to have more interviews on the blog. If you are interested to be interviewed or if you want to interview one of your friends, you cans end a picture to vincent.cop@rsca.com and answer the following 5 questions:
- can you introduce yourself as a player? When did you start playing?
- why do you like subbuteo table football?
- what are your greatest achivements in the game?
- If you had to improve something in table football tournaments, what would it be?
- What are your thoughts about WASPA? Why do you like (or dislike) it?

h) WASPA is waiting your feedback

Any idea on how to improve WASPA is more than welcome. A new season is going to start and we are looking for ideas to get more players involved, more nations taking part and more clubs organizing events. Your ideas to improve things can be sent by e-mail to vincent.cop@rsca.com

i) If some of your friends want to receive the monthly report by e-mail, they can drop a line to vincent.cop@rsca.com to be added in the mailing list

Monday, 26 August 2013

On August 25, the "SG Tour" event was played at Orchid Country Club under the banner of Woodlands SC. There were a few last minute pull-outs thus we had only 6 players who battled it out on 2 pitches in two 15 halves. Each players were randomly pick to play three games in the group stage with the top two progressing to final followed by 3rd/4th & plates. In the end of the group stages it was apparent that Tan Kok Wee & Michael Choong were too strong for the others & were the deserving finalists. Both battled the close fought final with both missing their chances to end the game in ordinary time. In the end the game ended in a stalemate where Kok Wee manage to hold his nerves to win the shoot out 2-0 & with this Kok Wee finally winning his 1st WASPA event on home soil.

Sunday, 25 August 2013

8 players attended the last WASPA tournament of the season in Cyprus. The event was very special with 2 big guests who helped to raise the level of the tournament. Paul Andres and Steve Bennett were a strong opposition for local hero Georgios Zangylos. After the group stage, Zangylos won his semi to Mikel Sarris while Steve Bennett beat Paul Andreas (4-1). In the final, Bennett and Zangylos couldn't make the difference. There was no goal in the regular time but Bennett scored the golden goal to become not only the first Scot to win a WASPA tournament but also the first foreign player to win a WASPA tournament in Cyprus and, last but not least, the first player of SC Stembert (the number 1 club in the FISTF ranking of clubs) to win a WASPA event.

Saturday, 24 August 2013

There was a very small turnout of six players in Templeuve this saturday but there were many good games. The group stage was played in normal time (two halves of 15 minutes) and Geoffrey Marain won all his games while Vincent Coppenolle qualified for the final thanks to a better goal-difference to Renald Deloose. In the final, Marain took an early lead and dominated the first half. Coppenolle cut his nail and played a better subbuteo to equalize in the last five minutes. In the sudden death, Coppenolle scored the winning goal after three minutes to win his second consecutive tournament. Pol Verhaghe from SC Temploux won the final for the third place against Renald Deloose (4-3). Maxime Hoguet from France was fifth and Hatim Elmajd, a players who came back in the game after a long break of more than 15 years, finished sixth. He will for sure be a good recruit for the Templeuve United club.

A nice turnout for the WASPA event of August 23, 2013 and a debut for Andy Mill, who found his first outing a bit tough. But with a few more events he will start to see improvements. This was one of our closest competitions for some time, helped by Chris Thomas dropping a point in a thrilling 3-3 draw with David Russell. David obviously liked this scoreline because the round before, he recorded the same scoreline against Mike Parnaby. Chris Still won the night on goal difference from Mike. Matthew Thomas took 4th place behind David Russell. John Bottomley had a good night, being unbeaten over the three games.

Date of next NETFA Teesside WASPA tournament will be 13th September 2013.

Thursday, 22 August 2013

There is a big announcement coming up from Belgium as the club of SC Flanders will organize a circuit of 10 WASPA tournaments in the new season. All events will be held at 8.00 pm at the club venue in HOFSTADE-ZEMST and the calendar of events is scheduled as follows: September 2, October 7, November 4, December 2, January 6, February 3, March 3, April 7, May 5 and June 2. Interested players should contact Filip Van Hulle at filip@subbuteovlaanderen.be

Wednesday, 21 August 2013

Saturday the 17th of August saw the successful hosting of the South African Table Football Association’s Winter Challenge. History was made in local table football circles when members of all three local table football clubs, namely Panorama TFC, Randburg TFC and Pretoria Flickers, were represented for the first time in a tournament.

A total of 21 participants flicked off in a Junior and Senior section. The junior section had three groups where the winner and runner-up progressed to the knock-out stages. The top two group winners progressed automatically to the semi-finals and the remaining 4 players competed in a barrage round for the remaining semi-final berths. Alex Rodrigues, who won his 4 group games convincingly, carried on his good form and defeated Fraser Kilian by 3 goals to 1 in an entertaining semi-final. Jayden van der Merwe, from Pretoria Flickers caused the first upset when he accounted for a previously undefeated Fraser Kilian by the odd goal in a tense eliminator. The junior final proved to be an extremely good advertisement for junior table football with the quality of play proving to be of a very high standard. After a tense and goalless final, the dreaded penalty shoot-out resulted in which Jayden held his nerve to edge out Alex by 4 goals to 3.

The senior section also proved to be a tight affair with some great action and goals showcasing a very successful tournament. Clifford and Fernando won their respective groups and were paired against their Pretoria counterparts in Chesseray and Adrian. Fernando needed a penalty shoot-out to oust Adrian in a very tense game and was joined by Clifford who outlasted Chesseray in a free-flowing game.

The senior final saw old adversaries, namely Clifford and Fernando squaring off again in a very entertaining and exciting final. In the end it was Clifford who proved victorious by 2 goals to 0 after a very tough final.
The tournament was concluded with a Champions clash between Junior champion – Jayden, against the senior champion – Clifford. In a very entertaining Final Clifford edged out Jayden by the odd goal in three. However the quality of play by Jayden was extremely impressive and big things are expected from Jayden in the future as his playing maturity level is way ahead of his age.

The post-tournament epitaph will once again reflect a very successful tournament where new friendships were made and as always, enjoyment was the buzz word with participants leaving with broad smiles.
Once again, thanks must go to Bryan Shekyll for allowing us to make use of the very impressive Randburg Soccer club-house.

Sunday, 18 August 2013

The third leg of the Sliders tour took place in Swinton, Manchester on Saturday, August 17th with 18 players taking part. Jeremy Bradley took the honors as he won the swiss league with 11 points (3 wins - 2 draws) while Matthew Thomas (who was making his debut under WASPA banner) and Mike Parnaby had also 11 points but ended second and third on goal difference. Colin Fletcher was fourth. The fact of the day was probably Justin Finch's accident in the playing hall. The president of the English Association fractured his ankle after his second game and was unable to continue playing. Thanks to Danny Lilley for organising. Lots of credit to Ben Staples for driving Justin Finch home after his injury.

Friday, 16 August 2013

The first year of the Hamilton Subbuteo Club is in the books and thanks to the core and regular group of revolving players. We have many players coming back from a busy summer and some new players starting in September and the club is expecting to be having full 16 man tournaments (and for the regulars it's time to get a pitch and board so the same two don't have to always lug theirs or a collective purchase). We have asked WASPA if we can hold two tournament in our boring months of November & February and have the second tourney in each month count for July & August and it's been granted. We will see if we adopt this. I would also like to propose a Champions tournament as we have enough to run a league within a league, extra games played at tournaments and possibly off days if need be.

As for the tournament, 10 players took part, both quarter-finals went to penalties. Kevin Suffoletta beat Liam Sexton and Brodyn Sexton beat Shaun Burt. Semi-finals results were Peter Sexton beating Kevin and Stephen McNab beating Brodyn. With Peter already cementing the league title, Stephen could have propelled to runner-up over Shaun but the cards weren't in his favour. Peter finished up with another victory.

Wednesday, 14 August 2013

The Calgary event on the 11th went off very well with Shane Hoopfer beating Brian Redmond in the final. Ben Herrel made his first semi-final and Tom Stevenson once again made it through to the semi's. Keifer Korol scored his first goal in competition and Riad Kadri was very strong throughout the tourney only to be upset in the quarter finals by Ben 3-2 in the 14th round of the shootout! Logan Stevenson had to drop out after the round robin due to illness. The next event in Calgary will be in mid-September and will mark the 1st anniversary of the Calgary Subbuteo Club's existence and will be it's 13th tournament. Exact date TBA.

Thursday, 8 August 2013

Seven players attended the WASPA tournament held in Chingford on wednesday and organized by the Essex Subbuteo League. There were many games as every played in the league system. At the end of the evening, there was a small surprise as Elliott Bellefontaine won the event with five wins and one loss. It is the very first tournament win for Elliott in the WASPA circuit. Kevin Cordell was second, Rudi Peterschinigg was third and Martin Bellefontaine (Elliott's dad) was fourth.

Seven players attended the Manchester tournament held on Augst 7th. Organizers decided to play under swiss system in four sessions and everyone had a good time. Brian Daley won all his games to win the title while Steve Clarke was second, Danny Lilley was third and Greg Sammons was fourth. Well done Brian!

Saturday, 3 August 2013

My name is Luke Radziminski and I am from Melbourne, Australia. The day I started playing subbuteo was roughly around the time I was turning 18 last year in November. The way I became interested in subbuteo in the first place was during a lengthy period of the off-season of football while I was an active member on the Melbourne Heart forum and one member started a thread on Subbuteo around April 2012. Others have contributed sharing their memories when they were kids with their dad’s introducing them to the game, and others posting pictures of different stadiums that subbuteo enthusiasts posted on the internet. I was not only astounded by the amount of effort put into those particular stadiums but finding out that a strategy-like table top game that is based on football has really caught my attention.

After researching for a couple of months about subbuteo, watching numerous video clips of game plays and learning the rules, I was very ambitious to invest in my first subbuteo set and managed to during the week of my 18th birthday.

I started to play with friends to experiment its mechanics but my first ever tournament I attended was around the month of April which was also the first ever tournament in Melbourne. Credits to Benji Batten who organised the tournament with the help of the veteran and well-known player in his prime; Carl Young who also happened to live locally.

Why do you like subbuteo table football?

I am a fan of strategy games and table top games as well a passionate football fan (my primary sport) and I must say subbuteo does create a very good mixture for my enjoyment. The game is underrated and underestimated with the enjoyment and competition it provides and the fact that it can substitute snooker/pool in your home. Not only that, I am not a good footballer myself and only found to be more skilled in field hockey that’s why I played it for 6 seasons (and probably more), I have 2 younger brothers that play high division football in their age group and the youngest one is representing his state! Feeling a bit left out, however, with subbuteo in my household, the game allows me to be part of the footballing culture and maintain my love for the game.

What are your greatest achievements in the game?

In terms of playing? Attending the second tournament and finishing on top of other players who were new to subbuteo as much as me but finishing outside of the top 4 which consisted of players who had many years of experience, but it did provide a massive confidence boost.

Off-field achievements? To start off, I am a Melbourne Heart supporter and also part of their active group “Yarraside”. I am not your “Ultras/hooligan” type I am just an individual who loves the club and community and to maximise my enjoyment I would join in this group to provide my vocal support throughout the 90 minutes. To show my appreciation to Yarraside, I have committed myself to a mini-project where I bought piece of a terrace stadium and hand painted every single spectator, applied legitimate Yarraside banners and flag, past and present. (Was fortunate enough through a friend who has happy to email me pdf files of these so I could print them off). From there, I took photos and managed to have them displayed on the Yarraside Facebook page which received well over 100 likes, and introduced subbuteo to many who have not heard of it, from there I upgraded the terrace to a grandstand dedicated to Yarraside.

Also, during the month of December, this was the period where I have started collecting teams, the start of my project and other forum members sharing their subbuteo journey through purchasing their own starters kit. Somewhere also were inspired to create their own stadiums and supporters after they viewed my photos of my own stadia. The subbuteo thread on the Melbourne Heart forum was very active following with the producer of the Melbourne Heart match day magazine: Schip Happens! To write an article about Subbuteo and how it was being revived here in Australia and give a slight hint of the current activity reviving the game here in Melbourne which arguably started from the forum. The revival of the game here in Victoria was inevitable and I was honoured to take part in the first Melbourne tournament with 3 Yarraside members (including myself) contributing to make this tournament happen under the WASPA banner.

For the record, this isn’t an exclusive, Melbourne heart supporter’s only club. Any person is invited, victory supporters or neutral.

If you had to improve something in table football tournaments, what would it be?

Although the 2 successful tournaments had past, Carl Young and Benji Batten are in the talks of expanding and re-adjusting future subbuteo sessions. Quoting Carl Young from the Subbuteo Melbourne Facebook group: "Hi everyone, after the success of our recent get togethers Benji and I have been asked what is next for Melbourne Subbuteo and any chances of more games? Therefore, could you let us know by July 22nd if you would be up for playing in a local league. Don't worry about the format and how many times we'd meet just let us know if you are interested for now.Also, who would be interested in helping to run/organise the league/club? The more the merrier.Finally, Benji and I are looking into running a full weekend tournament at sometime in the future. On the Sat we'd have an individual comp followed by a team comp on the Sunday. This in the hope we'd get players from interstate and even Singapore (I've already contact my Subbuteo mate Den in Singapore who might be interested). We'd be able to have Melbourne A, B, C teams if we had enough local players."

What are your thoughts about WASPA? Why do you like (or dislike) it?

I love the fact that WASPA exists which enables all players to communicate and form a strong connection and provide the ability to advertise future tournaments to increase participation rates.
Nothing wrong with WASPA but I just hope someday more businesses in Australia would make investments on the subbuteo product and hopefully people would catch on and follow up on WASPA and join the association and willing to participate in tournaments.

The only thing about WASPA (from what I experienced here in Australia) is that I only heard about them once I started collecting subbuteo equipment and a mention of it on the Heart forum, courtesy of Vincent Coppenolle himself. Perhaps there could be ways of WASPA or 3rd parties reaching out to football communities and mention something about Subbuteo just like the magazine Schip Happens? Follow the link if interested.

Friday, 2 August 2013

July 2013 was supposed to be a calm period due to the holidays but there were many events:
- 19 regional tournaments
- 2 tournaments with the old rules
- 1 promotional tournament (for the first time in italy)
- 1 tournament with the advanced rules (played in Ireland)
57 new players have been added in the rankings and we have now a total of 823 players ranked!

2) What happened this month?

For the first time Canada is on top of the ranking of nations, which is a good reward for the great efforts to relaunch the game in the country in the last 12 months.
Due to the summer and some special circumstances, some clubs asked to have 2 events in July. This was possible because they had no tournament in June or they will have no tournament in August.
We were glad to see the second tournament in Finland and also the double event in Ireland. The advanced rules brought very good things as there were many close games and some surprises in the results.
We wish a warm welcome to the Maltese club of Bormla. After the great efforts done by Attard Subbuteo Club, it is good to see another club in the island organizing a WASPA tournament.
Well done the the Pretoria Flickers for promoting the game in South Africa.
WASPA was also very honored to have the first tournament in South Carolina (USA) played under their banner.
Congratulations to the Italian club of Bari for organizing their first 2 events with a good turnout of players.
Finally, we would like to thank all organizers for helping WASPA to grow and for putting energy to host tournaments. Even when there are notmany players, there can be many good games and many players can be introduced to the game.

To add tournaments or to send results, please use this e-mail address: vincent.cop@rsca.com

4) Help needed for interviews

REMINDER:
For the future, we will try to have more interviews on the blog. If you are interested to be interviewed or if you want to interview one of your friends, you cans end a picture to vincent.cop@rsca.com and answer the following 5 questions:
- can you introduce yourself as a player? When did you start playing?
- why do you like subbuteo table football?
- what are your greatest achivements in the game?
- If you had to improve something in table football tournaments, what would it be?
- What are your thoughts about WASPA? Why do you like (or dislike) it?

5) WASPA is waiting your feedback

Any idea on how to improve WASPA is more than welcome. A new season is going to start and we are looking for ideas to get more players involved, more nations taking part and more clubs organizing events. Your ideas to improve things can be sent by e-mail to vincent.cop@rsca.com

6) If some of your friends want to receive the monthly report by e-mail, they can drop a line to vincent.cop@rsca.com to be added in the mailing list

Five good reasons to organize WASPA tournaments

1. You only need 3 players to have the WASPA status and get ranking points;2. It is always better to play under the banner of an international association instead of playing only friendly games;3. The WASPA will help you to make new friends and meet more different players;4. You can slightly change some of the official rules when you organize a tournament (for instance you can play games of 20 minutes);5. Tournaments are easy to organize and you just need to announce the tournaments a few days in advance to get the WASPA status.

For other nations, candidates are welcome. Clubs interested to join the WASPA circuit are also free to contact us. Applications should be sent to Vincent Coppenolle

To buy Subbuteo

Mad About Games

Philosophy

The philosophy of the WASPA is to make unity between all amateur subbuteo players in the world, to organize tournaments and meetings between players at regional, national and international level.There will be a world ranking organized.Players of every country should have the same importance. There should not be difference between players in or outside Europe. Players from small nations should have the same rights and duties as those from bigger countries.